Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!virtech!cpcahil From: cpcahil@virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: OS/2 vs. Unix Message-ID: <1990Jan4.110834.14165@virtech.uucp> Date: 4 Jan 90 11:08:34 GMT References: <2590cf5b@ralf> <1022@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> Organization: Virtual Technologies Inc. Lines: 43 In article <1022@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de>, rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Kai-Uwe Rommel) writes: > Sometimes i tried to copy a 1.44M Disk as a single piece with my own > copydisk program on a system only having 2.5M RAM (the system takes > about 1.5M to 2M) - it worked well. When I tried to load about 1.5M > sources into the MicroEMACS editor on the same machine running > Xenix/286 (also having virtual memory) this lead into serious trouble, > the machine was really unusable because of the swapping which blocked > the CPU. You began this message talking about unfair comparisons and then you talk about comparing a program that is probably a total of 20 or 30 K that reads 1.44 MB of data to a program that is > 1 meg that reads 1.5M AND adds additional pointers and such so that the 1.5 meg of data is editable. This is comparing apples and oranges. Take your copy disk program, port it to the xenix system and then try. Or just use dd bs=1440K. > What I want to say is, that OS/2 is much more flexible than Unix on > machines with hardware not supporting demand paging (like the 80286, > for which both OS/2 and Xenix/286 were designed). And the OS/2-386 Xenix was not designed for the 286. It was designed for larger systems and ported to the 286 because of the demand for multi-user solutions for that hardware package. > version will support demand paging too. Also, take a look on OS/2's > dynamic linking (ever heard about dynamic linking of Unix versions on > 286/386 class computers ?). And, the separate screen groups for > concurrently executing processes are fine. Of course, PC versions of > Unix also have this feature, but did you ever work on a Unix terminal > (alpha) having two or more processes running on your terminal and all > of them producing output to you ? As I write this message I am working on a unix terminal that has 10 windows all producing output to them and it works fine. In addition, some of the windows are running DOS (concurrently) programs. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Conor P. Cahill uunet!virtech!cpcahil 703-430-9247 ! | Virtual Technologies Inc., P. O. Box 876, Sterling, VA 22170 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+